“Plenty,” replied the man, and he made himself a fresh cigarette as he sat back in the boat, to go on smoking. “Not so many crocodiles here,” he said, “and they are smaller. More birds too. Look!” And as the men dipped their oars to row slowly up the winding stream, which often seemed to turn back upon itself, the Spaniard pointed now to tiny bee-like sunbirds with their dazzling metallic casques and gorgets—the brilliant little creatures that take the place of the humming-birds of the New World.
At another time, though the two lads, eagerly observant and with the doctor to back them, needed no showing, their guide pointed to the many brilliantly-tinted birds of the thrush family, at the barbets and trogons, not so brilliant as those of the Western world, but each lovely in itself, while as they went on and on along their meandering river path, the birds that struck them as being most novel and at the same time tame in the way in which they came down the overhanging branches of the great forest trees, as if their curiosity had been excited by the strangers, were the many-tinted plantain eaters, with their crested heads, and the lovely green and crimson touracoos, which, while their violet and crimson relatives wore, as it were, a feather casque, displayed on their part a vivid green ornamentation that passed from beak to nape, which when they were excited looked more like a plume.
They had come thus far without firing a shot, for the doctor had said—
“Let us leave the shooting till our return, and be contented with charging our memories and feasting our eyes, for no dried skins, however carefully they are preserved, will ever display the beauties of these birds’ nature as we watch them here in life. But we must have a skin or two of these touracoos, for I want to show you lads the wonders of that vivid crimson upon their underparts.”
“Oh, I can see it plainly enough, uncle,” said Rodd.
“Yes,” said Uncle Paul, “but you don’t notice what I mean. Instead of that crimson being a beautiful dye fixed in the feathers, it is a soft red pigment which can be washed out into water and— I saw something moving up that creek,” he added, in a low voice.
“Niggers perhaps,” said the Spaniard, without turning his head.
“Likely to attack?” asked Rodd.
“Pish!” said the Spaniard contemptuously. “Harmless. Fishing perhaps. We shall see more, I expect, farther on.”
He did not trouble himself to turn his head, though the rest in the boat kept a sharp look-out for what had attracted the doctor’s attention up a narrow inlet arched over by the overhanging trees, but it was not until close upon evening that, as they pursued their winding way, this side stream opened out more into a reach, and then for the first time a movement some hundreds of yards behind brought forth a warning from Joe Cross, who was seated with the tiller in his hand.